Don Juan

In Spanish, is pronounced [doŋˈxwan]. The usual English pronunciation is /ˌdɒnˈwɑːn/, with two syllables and a silent "J", but today, as more English-speakers have notions of Spanish, the pronunciation /ˌdɒnˈhwɑːn/ is becoming more common. However, in Lord Byron's verse version the name rhymes with ruin and true one, suggesting the name was pronounced with three syllables, possibly /ˌdɒnˈʒuːən/ or /ˌdɒnˈdʒuːən/, in England at the time. This would have been characteristic of English literary precedent, where English pronunciations were often imposed on Spanish names, such as Don Quixote /ˌdɒnˈkwɪksət/.

There have been many versions of the Don Juan story, but the basic outline remains the same: Don Juan is a wealthy libertine who devotes his life to seducing women. He takes great pride in his ability to seduce women of all ages and stations in life, and he often disguises himself and assumes other identities in order to seduce women. The aphorism that Don Juan lives by is: "Tan largo me lo fiáis" (translated as "What a long term you are giving me!"[1]). This is his way of indicating that he is young and that death is still distant – he thinks he has plenty of time to repent later for his sins.[2]

His life is also punctuated with violence and gambling, and in most versions he kills a man: Don Gonzalo, the father of Doña Ana, a girl he has seduced. This murder leads to the famous "last supper" scene, where Don Juan invites a statue of Don Gonzalo to dinner. There are different versions of the outcome: in some versions Don Juan dies, having been denied salvation by God; in other versions he willingly goes to Hell, having refused to repent; in some versions Don Juan asks for and receives a divine pardon.

The first written version of the Don Juan story was a play, El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra (The Trickster of Seville and the Stone Guest), published in Spain around 1630 by Tirso de Molina (pen name of Gabriel Téllez).[3]

In Tirso de Molina's version Don Juan is portrayed as an evil man who seduces women thanks to his ability to manipulate language and disguise his appearance. This is a demonic attribute, since the devil is known for shape-shifting or taking other peoples' forms.[2] In fact Tirso's play has a clear moralizing intention. Tirso felt that young people were throwing their lives away, because they believed that as long as they made an Act of Contrition before they died, they would automatically receive God's forgiveness for all the wrongs they had done, and enter into heaven. Tirso's play argues in contrast that there is a penalty for sin, and there are even unforgivable sins. The devil himself, who is identified with Don Juan as a shape-shifter and a "man without a name", cannot escape eternal punishment for his unforgivable sins. As in a medieval Danse Macabre, death makes us all equal in that we all must face eternal judgment.[2] Tirso de Molina's theological perspective is quite apparent through the dreadful ending of his play.[2]

Another aspect of Tirso's play is the cultural importance of honor in Spain of the golden age. This was particularly focused on women's sexual behavior, in that if a woman did not remain chaste until marriage, her whole family's honor would be devalued.[4][2]

The original play was written in the Spanish Golden Age according to its beliefs and ideals. But as time passed, the story was translated into other languages, and it was adapted to accommodate cultural changes.[3]

Other well-known versions of Don Juan are Molière's play Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre (1665), Antonio de Zamora's play No hay plazo que no se cumpla, ni deuda que no se pague, y Convidado de piedra (1722), Goldoni's play Don Giovanni Tenorio (1735), José de Espronceda's poem El estudiante de Salamanca (1840), and José Zorrilla's play Don Juan Tenorio (1844). Don Juan Tenorio is still performed throughout the Spanish-speaking world on 2 November ("All Souls Day", the Day of the Dead).

Mozart's opera Don Giovanni has been called "the opera of all operas".[5] First performed in Prague in 1787, it inspired works by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Alexander Pushkin, Søren Kierkegaard, George Bernard Shaw and Albert Camus. The critic Charles Rosen analyzes the appeal of Mozart's opera in terms of "the seductive physical power" of a music linked with libertinism, political fervor, and incipient Romanticism.[6]

The first English version of Don Juan was The Libertine (1676) by Thomas Shadwell. A revival of this play in 1692 included songs and dramatic scenes with music by Henry Purcell. Another well-known English version is Lord Byron's epic poem Don Juan (1821).

Don Juans Ende, a play derived from an unfinished 1844 retelling of the tale by poet Nikolaus Lenau, inspired Richard Strauss's orchestral tone poem Don Juan.[7] This piece premiered on 11 November 1889, in Weimar, Germany, where Strauss served as Court Kapellmeister and conducted the orchestra of the Weimar Opera. In Lenau's version of the story, Don Juan's promiscuity springs from his determination to find the ideal woman. Despairing of ever finding her, he ultimately surrenders to melancholy and wills his own death.[8]

In the film Adventures of Don Juan starring Errol Flynn (1948), Don Juan is a swashbuckling lover of women who also fights against the forces of evil.

Don Juan in Tallinn (1971) is an Estonian film version based on a play by Samuil Aljošin. In this version, Don Juan is a woman dressed in men's clothes. She is accompanied by her servant Florestino on her adventure in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.[9]

In Don Juan, or If Don Juan Were a Woman (1973), a French-Italian co-production, Brigitte Bardot plays a female version of the character.[10]

Don Juan DeMarco (1995), starring Johnny Depp and Marlon Brando, is a film in which a mental patient is convinced he is Don Juan, and retells his life story to a psychiatrist.

Don Jon (2013), a film set in New Jersey of the 21st century, features an attractive young man whose addiction to online pornography is compared to his girlfriend's consumerism.

Don Juan fascinated the 18th-century English novelist Jane Austen: "I have seen nobody on the stage who has been a more interesting Character than that compound of Cruelty and Lust".[11]

The Danish philosopher Kierkegaard discussed Mozart's version of the Don Juan story at length in his 1843 treatise Either/Or.[12]

In 1901, Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote the second movement of his second symphony based on the climax of Don Juan. The piece begins with a representation of Death walking up the road to Don Juan's house, where Don Juan pleads with Death to let him live. Also, the 1905 novel The Song of the Blood-Red Flower by the Finnish author Johannes Linnankoski has been influenced by Don Juan along the protagonist of the story.

The protagonist of Shaw's 1903 Man and Superman is a modern-day Don Juan named not Juan Tenorio but John Tanner. The actor playing Tanner morphs into his model in the mammoth third act, usually called Don Juan in Hell and often produced as a separate play due to its length. In it, Don Juan (played by Charles Boyer in a noted 1950s recording) exchanges philosophical barbs with the devil (Charles Laughton).

In Spain, the first three decades of the twentieth century saw more cultural fervor surrounding the Don Juan figure than perhaps any other period. In one of the most provocative pieces to be published, the endocrinologist Gregorio Marañón argued that, far from the paragon of masculinity he was often assumed to be, Don Juan actually suffered from an arrested psychosexual development.[13]

During the 1918 influenza epidemic in Spain, the figure of Don Juan served as a metaphor for the flu microbe.[14]

The mid-20th century French author Albert Camus referred to Don Juan in his 1942 essay The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus describes Don Juan as an example of an 'absurd hero', as he maintains a reckless abandon in his approach to love. His seductive lifestyle "brings with it all the faces in the world, and its tremor comes from the fact that it knows itself to be mortal". He "multiplies what he cannot unify... It is his way of giving and vivifying".[15]

In the 1956 Buddy Holly single "Modern Don Juan", the singer gains a reputation for being like the libertine in his pursuit of a romantic relationship.

Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman wrote and directed a comic sequel in 1960 titled The Devil's Eye in which Don Juan, accompanied by his servant, is sent from Hell to contemporary Sweden to seduce a young woman before her marriage.

Anthony Powell in his 1980 novel Casanova's Chinese Restaurant contrasts Don Juan, who "merely liked power" and "obviously did not know what sensuality was", with Casanova, who "undoubtedly had his sensuous moments".[16]

Don Juan is mentioned in the 1980 Broadway musical adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1862 novel Les Miserables, in which the character Grantaire states that Marius Pontmercy is acting like Don Juan. In the 1986 Broadway musical adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 The Phantom of the Opera, the character of the Phantom writes an opera based on the legend of Don Juan called Don Juan Triumphant.

The former Thai Queen Sirikit once told reporters that her son Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, now King Rama X, was "a bit of a Don Juan".

• Casanova
• Don Juanism

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Don Juan.

• Text of Molière's Dom Juan' (in French)
• Encyclopædia Britannica article about Don Juan
• Armand E. Singer: A Bibliography of the Don Juan Theme 1954-2003
• "Flowers of Evil", Charles Baudelaire